Dems form anonymously-funded outside group to defend president who hates anonymously-funded outside groups

posted at 8:04 pm on April 29, 2011 by Allahpundit

It’s all our fault, of course. Obama would never do something as foully hypocritical as betray a core promise on campaign finance unless his hand was forced. So remind me again: Who was it who forced him to opt out of public financing for his campaign three years ago after blowing all sorts of smoke about it during the primaries? The lesson then, as now, is that when The One is made to choose between principle and electoral advantage, he’ll choose the latter every time. Karl Rove and the Koch brothers and those mysterious foreign donors behind the Chamber of Commerce really have little to do with it.

Despite the fact that the co-founders of the new group recently left high-profile jobs at the White House, Obama’s team insists it has nothing to do with the organization. Which, from an intellectual standpoint, is about as persuasive as treating the U.S. and NATO as completely distinct operational entities.

At least he’s never tried something as silly as that.

“We don’t control outside groups,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters today on Air Force One, as the president flew from Washington, DC, to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “These are not people working for the administration.”

Carney was referring to Priorities USA and Priorities USA Action, the new outside groups formed by former White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney, who served as chief of staff to then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Priorities USA Action will register itself in the tax code as a “social welfare group,” which does not require the disclosure of donors. Or, as Burton and Sweeney put it in a press release: “Priorities USA Action is an Independent Expenditure PAC that supports candidates who will advance policies that provide the strongest and most sound outcomes for middle class families.”…

Sweeney in a statement said that the new groups are part of “an effort to level the playing field. Americans deserve an honest debate about job creation, the economy, national security and education. That debate will never happen if only right wing extremists are engaged on the battlefield.”…

Burton said that “while we agree that fundamental campaign finance reforms are needed, Karl Rove and the Koch brothers cannot live by one set of rules as our values and our candidates are overrun with their hundreds of millions of dollars. We will follow the rules as the Supreme Court has laid them out [in the Citizens United decision], but the days of the double standard are over.”

They’ve already got an ad out, which I’ve embedded below. It’s as hopeful and change-y and forward-looking as you’d expect given that O’s big political achievement thus far this year is requesting a copy of his birth certificate. If you’re short on time, though, I advise skipping the ad and watching the second clip — his weekly message from last fall in which he rails against the GOP for using precisely the same sort of political organization that his toadies Burton and Sweeney have now created for him. Two weeks ago, I spent an hour on a Friday night marveling at his hypocrisy on presidential signing statements; tonight we’ll be busy marveling at this. I wonder what insane reversal we’ll be marveling at two weeks from now. Maybe, after famously railing in 2002 against launching “dumb wars” in the Middle East, he’ll shock us by inexplicably intervening in some Arab conflict for murky reasons? Nah, too far-fetched. Exit quotation from Russ Feingold: “Democrats who mirror the right-wing tactics of Karl Rove and David Koch do our nation no favors.”

They haven’t gotten to the bottom of bho’s last election funds that are funky, how can we do it this time? soros is at the hip of bho, mo, jarrett, and most of the team. bho needs 1B for re-election, lots of funky money out there from who knows where?
L

You know, there just isn’t a lot to be said about this. I remember all the snide remarks made by the press because W would always schedule some small official duty while campaigning for reelection. Obama doesn’t even bother, he just jumps on AF1 and goes to fundraisers and TV appearances on the taxpayers dime. Some might think Obama is being more honest but what about the press. Time for some equal opportunity whining. I won’t hold my breath.

MIAMI – Stepping up his demand to change the nation’s immigration laws, President Barack Obama promised graduates at a vast, multicultural community college in Miami on Friday that he’ll keep working to help students not legally in the U.S. to become American citizens.

Obama must be planning on a little more press scrutiny, this time, and realizes he can’t get away with all those small anonymous overseas donations he got the last time, so why not just do some more that can’t be tracked easily. Does anyone actually believe a Democrat was honest about how he got his money?

In recent months, Democratic groups that had been hastily formed in the eleventh hour of the 2010 campaign to try to protect some House and Senate candidates have been reorganized and merged to create two entities.

Majority PAC will focus on Senate races. Donors to it will be disclosed, but contributors to a companion arm — Patriot Majority — will be kept secret.

The committee is being headed by two former aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Rebecca Lambe and Susan McCue. The leadership also includes two former heads of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, J.B. Poersch and Jim Jordan. Craig Varoga, who heads Patriot Majority PAC, which ran ads on Reid’s behalf last year, and fundraiser Monica Dixon are also involved.

House Majority PAC, which is being run by Ali Lapp, a former campaign director at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during Emanuel’s tenure, will assist vulnerable House members. The committee began airing its first ads last week, which criticize Republicans who voted for a conservative budget that overhauls Medicare.

——————-

And American Bridge, a group founded by David Brock, who heads Media Matters, will have two subsidiaries: an organization financed with anonymous donors that will do opposition research on Republican candidates that will be shared with the other groups and an arm that will run independent ads and that will disclose its donors.

“I think progressives saw what the Republicans did, and we not only want to replicate it but do it better,” said Chris Harris, spokesman for American Bridge.

Allahpundit shows a full and complete understanding of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals as he points out the base hypocrisy of a group which hates political speech emanating from corporations starting up corporations for the purpose of engaging in political speech.

In this case, said corporation does what many commercial corporations are designed to do — shield people from the consequences of their actions.

They need this as a way of anonymously funneling back to the Liar and Thief’s Gang all the BILLIONS that they stole from the stim money. Well, stole might be a bit strong… Skimmed might be too weak. Let’s say… the money they ‘Spread Around’…
–

Rule 1 Demonize the opposition.
Rule 2: Do whatever you’ve accused the demonized group of doing because you just have to “level the playing field.”
Rule 3: Find a new target to demonize.
Rule 4: Go back to Rule 1.